Two things I would never tell my T in a million years.

1) that a year ago I came close to offing myself

2) that a lot of the time I regret I didn't.

I was honest last year with a psychiatrist and said I had thought about it from time to time, but I never ever had the desire or intent to actually do. Her helpful kind response, blackmail me into a psych ward. Even after I basically groveled and pleaded not to do that to me. THEN I had the desire and intent, just not the follow through.

Then I got the "suicide lecture" from the hospital group therapist after an emotionally raw session. I found him very good overall, but he sure couldn't read me that day. So after group, he pulls me aside and tells me I need to to to the ER and check myself in if I feel like "harming myself."

So, I would say I was down or depressed or whatever, but it will never be that honest with any MH professional again. Not if their idea of helping is to force me to do something with the potential of a completely ruining whatever life I have managed to salvage from the wreckage of 2012.

My life, my choice. I'm not the property of the state, the MH system, or any religious outlook. I decide for me.

My T's have never asked me to go to the hospital simply for having thoughts about suicide (and I've had them a lot over the years). A plan, obsessive ideation mixed with impulsiveness, yes; but just thoughts, no. And certainly having thought about suicide in the past, but not currently, would not warrant sending anyone to the hospital.

I find opening up honestly to my therapist to be really important to my healing. I hope some day you will be able to find that ability to trust again. Keeping it to yourself may be the reason you are having trouble getting beyond what happened to you a year or so ago. Talking about whatever caused us trauma/pain often lessens the intensity of that anxiety and memory so you can move forward instead of keep rehashing the trauma of the past. Just something to consider.

My very first session with my T, we had the conversation about suicidal thoughts. He gave me one of those confidentiality disclosures, and I asked him about the part where he will disclose info if I am a danger to myself. I was like, this sucks, the whole reason I'm here is because I think about killing myself almost incessantly; if I cannot discuss it with you without you ratting me out to someone, there is no point in me coming. He discussed it with me without overreacting to what I said (that the thoughts were incessant and I had a definite plan and the means to implement that plan). We reached an agreement that he would not say anything to anyone unless he thought I was in danger of actually doing something that week.

A different T might be more helpful than the ones you have tried so far. You could interview them on the phone and see what their policy is on addressing suicidal thoughts with no actual plan.

Suicide is a taboo subject.
I wrote the word Taboo next to any intake form I ever filled out.
After interviewing 20 therapists after a termination, only one asked and I said...it's taboo
I laughed and said...You are failing every test of trust.
She relaxed and I never went back.

I decide for me too.

Good lord, if I was put away every time I thought seriously about suicide, I'd have my own wing of the hospital by now. That's really rough.

And yes, we decide for ourselves. In the end, the keys are in our hands. And I hope you find a way to trust again, so you can take advantage of help to make your life better. I know it might not be easy to believe, but there are a lot of Ts out there who understand that the thought is not the action.

It's interesting that you had 2 different experiences in which the Ts apparently thought you were a potential danger to yourself, even though you did not think so at the time. Could it be that your presentation of yourself is sending a message you don't intend to send? Or could it be that you were more SUI than you think you were?

When I came close to an attempt, I was away from my T for 3 weeks and in a very stressful situation. When I next saw him, I told him. He told me that he'd need to put in place certain safeguards, like limiting my AD refill to a 2 weeks supply, increasing my sessions to 2x a week, and making me promise to call him day or night if I felt desperate again. Hospitalization was never mentioned.

Well, actually, I present to this quack saying explicitly I'm a mess because some drug-addicted leach trying to suck my developmentally disabled client's trust fund dry is gunning for me, and I need help fixing my life so I can have a better future because I can't live or die like that. That statement plus being honest on her stupid intake form and saying sure, I've thought about it, but I've never had any desire to actually do it - got me diagnosed in 5 minutes, incorrectly, and sent up the river.

Interesting, my father used to threaten me with guns as a kid. Then this dude does the same, and it brings up so many intense feelings that 10 days later I'm in a psychiatrist 's office for help. Instead, I get treated like I'm some criminal. Three weeks later I'm sitting on a dock at five in the morning, and I spend close to two hours with a loaded gun in my lap just debating, pleading with God to tell me what I had done, why I was apparently so evil I deserved all of thus, why even God himself seemed to have abandoned me. How deliciously ironic, I could have been a verse in that Alanis Morisette song.

Sorry, my life, my choice. I'm sick of some thousand year old plus edict thought up by some old codger in Rome, designed to keep the serfs from offing themselves when they figured out just how screwed in life they were by the plutocracy of the nobles, telling me it 's not my choice because at some level I am just the property of a state that gets to decide who lives and who dies. I decide from here on out. I wish I had the courage to be fully honest, but for legal reasons never again.

I'm not on parole, I refuse to be treated like that. I'm not going to have someone count my pills or whatever. If they can't respect that it's my life screw them.

Find a T that doesn't 'play the mental health game'.

Survived one failed attempt, therapist hospitalized me on that one.

The next time I was feeling it that intensely, I hospitalized myself.

So glad I failed the first time, and am glad I had the mindset to care for myself enough the second time to do what I needed to do.

But, you are right, it is up to us, and when we are intent on following through with it, nothing or nobody can stop us.

I for one do not want to give the bastards (my abusers) that ... The SOB's have already took enough from me ... So I want to keep living just to prove to them they didn't win.

Besides that, if I do kill myself, there will be a hole in this universe where I'm supposed to be and that would be a very sad thing.

I hope all of us decide to keep on living ... But, for those who don't I offer a gentle hug and no judgment.

!!!YEAH!!!
You are awesome!
I swear it's like you're walking around in my head.
These MH professionals love a god they never met more than the person right in front of them and the name of that god is Frued.
If we let everyone project there own sense of perfection on us, at the end we would look like an attraction at a carnival freak show.
If they want to lock someone up...lock up the people who gave us the outcomes we face...or we run the risk of becoming like them to fit in because the message that spciety sends is that they are accepted.
We don't need MH professionals sometimes as much as we need professional avengers.

I personally believe that if someone kidnapped my key abusers...tied them to chairs in an abandoned warehouse...and then brought me in to question their actions that hurt me...if they deny their wrong doing, they suffer what they did to me...if they don't deny it I can have mercy and new relationship based on, Don't **** With Me Again.
Most would admit their wrong and most would get mercy but I would fully be vindicated.

The only problem is...
The following week, I would find myself waking up in an abandoned warehouse tied to a chair.

I think if we had our abusers right where we wanted them, we would see ourselves.

Your MH professionals could benefit from that chair though.

Around here, it is almost impossible to go inpatient even if you are suicidal or homicidal; ideation doesn't do it---you've got to be Very convincing, maybe carry a gun in...

In my experience of representing respondents in involuntary mental health proceedings, I would suggest that being extremely cautious about what one tells a therapist about thoughts about sui in any fashion, would be the more prudent choice unless one wanted hospitalization as an option. There is, in my jurisdiction, a very large amount of deference given to the mental health provider's decisions/discretion on actions around a client discussing sui- which is very difficult to circumvent after the client's disclosure of any sort on the topic.

Which is exactly why I posted under the heading I did. Now, interestingly enough, my T and I have discussed this ad nauseum, she seems to feel I really overreacted to the perceived threat from this Dr. My T works at a private inpatient facility days, just sees her private practice clients evenings. She says it's extremely hard to get anyone involuntarily committed here. I am sure it varies state to state.

To me, the thought that a medical provider would so quickly disregard my privacy about such a sensitive matter is horrific. Like Green Day says, Do You Know Your Enemy? Too bad the enemy is the one ostensibly there to give aid and comfort.

Um...
The details on living with my bio mom and step dad for a few months (2011).
Nor the details of things my gma set me up in, starting back when i was maybe 10yr.

Well, to be fair, you sought out a T. To then say whatever caused her in her professional judgement to believe you posed a danger to yourself is somehow an invasion of privacy is a bit of a stretch. As her client, you are her first constituency; but she also has to answer to her profession's ethics and the law. And now it sounds as if she didn't threaten you with hospitalization after all. So it seems communication is an issue to be worked on.

Thanks for this. I found it helpful and affirming.

My first two hospitalisations, I admitted myself because I couldn't take it.
My third, I failed an attempt and was forced in (despite me aggresively saying no)

I realised that hospitalisations does not have an effect AT ALL. I don't like going there. All I do there is NOTHING, and get probed about everyday - hows your mood? hows your appetite? hows your sleep? anything on your mind - which I HATE. Having those probed once a fortnight is already enough.

I hate it when T and pdoc asks me on hospitalisation when I say I'm sui. It's like they never understood it at all. Sui will always be part of my depression. It will ALWAYS be there no matter what.

And oh yes, does anyone else feel more anxiety after they got discharged? Because hell, after every round of hospitalisation all the more I don't feel like meeting people and the world. It's like I was trapped in a "safe" little cage and now I'm released to the wide world, naked.

But a fellow patient when I was inpatient said this though, "The hospital and those bars on the windows aren't the prison. *points to head* Here is."

To anyone who is struggling, I offer hugs to you

Ah, again, therein lies the rub, to quote Shakespeare's Hamlet, a character who himself often had the desire to "shuffle off the mortal coil" himself.

Legal obligation under the law, yes. Although just because something is written into code doesn't mean it's just or fair, a lot of things have been "the law" which stunk like a dead raccoon on a July highway, think our 100 year experiment in legal segregation in the US.

Professional ethics, this is the one that amuses me. Because I can only be amused or devastated, and I have had enough devastation already. Several major ethical violations all wrapped up,in one shiny little package of a one hour initial consultation.

First, if she truly believed I was an "imminent" danger to myself, she had an ethical obligation to do something about it right away. I have since been told that protocol would be to call 9/11 on the person while they are in the office. However, after she tells me I am such a danger to myself I need to be immediately admitted to an inpatient ward, she let's me go, with a 36 hour ultimatum to tell her which of the two day programs she ordered me into I would do. And absolutely no treatment of any kind for three weeks, finally the Friday before this day program started, she hauls me back in there for a 20 minute appointment and starts me on the 8 week titration for lamictal.

I have been over this hour about a million times in my mind, and discussed it with both my therapist and my new psychiatrist. I also gave my therapist express permission to discuss it with her supervising Ph.D. psychologist. Three medical professionals who have all told me what I believed to be true, that I was grossly mistreated in a very unethical manner. I should have walked out if that first meeting with 2 prescriptions, for an anti anxiety medication and an SSRI, a follow up in one week, and a referral to a T. Which is exactly what my new psychiatrist said she would have done in that situation.

Communication problem, you betcha. Not on my end, I think I can pretty effectively communicate my positions when necessary. After seeing her a total of 6 times and walking out saying WTF every time over something she had said, I came to realize I was dealing with a cold, unconcerned, money grubbing hack with no people skills, no compassion, and a very dictatorial manner. I felt very vindicated after the fact by reading online patient reviews where others had described her as a "brutal thug" and similar. One person actually signed a review under the name "Traumatized Former Patient".

Bottom line, she was looking out for her bottom line and the fragile state of her med-mal coverage, and doing a piss-poor job of it at that. For her, it's over, just another former short-term patient. For me, as a guy with a lifetime of traumas, it's all just more gasoline for the blazing fires of PTSD, and it's never over. Just responding to this post has me wishing I was back on that dock with that gun. Ironic, it's a Sunday morning, just like it was almost exactly 13 months ago when I was there.

I can say this, if they ever want to lock me up again "for my own good" they are going to have to take me alive by force. And they will never take me alive, I am never going to allow that to be an option. I have never felt so lost and so powerless, not even as a 15-16 year old kid just taking it when my father best the crap out of me. Never again. My life, my choice from here on out. Irony again! now I do sound like a criminal. Desperation and raging PTSD.

Edited to clarify what I meant about privacy: I told her explicitly, first thing out of my mouth, that I absolutely had to have this whole thing treated in a way that would be completely private so no one could ever find out, because any knowledge of my getting psychiatric treatment would ruin me professionally and personally. She completely disregarded that. How exactly did she think my absence from my life while admitted to a psych ward would go unnoticed at home or work?

MJ, I have a suspicion that your approach to communicating may partially be what led your doctors to feel you were a danger to yourself (which you often sound like when you use phrases like "they won't take me alive" etc.). That is pretty extreme verbiage that sounds very desperate and I read it with great consistency in your posts on various forums.

I have no doubt that your experience with being hospitalized was traumatizing for you; that is quite apparent. However, unless I am mistaken, you still have a job, your life has not ended like you often say it has. You still seem very much in control of yourself despite what you say about your life having fallen apart, etc. You seem so hyperfocused on the idea that the mere stigma of needing help for mental health issues is going to ruin your life that you haven't stopped to see that it actually hasn't ruined your life.

I truly and sincerely hope you can work with your therapist on dealing with the extremity and trauma that you are still dealing with surrounding your hospitalization a year ago. Honestly, you seem to be making it much harder on yourself than it really needs to be and your therapist will hopefully be able to help you get past that and move on.

I am a professional and have been hospitalized 14 times since 2005 due to my mental health symptoms. If your one time in the hospital is supposed to have ruined your life, what should my 14 stays should have done to me and my career? In reality, like yours, it has not changed my career status at all. I've continued to work full time, my employers have been supportive, and I have been quite able to continue working effectively in my career. Unless I've missed something in your posts, you've never said you lost your job because of this or anything. The loss is "in your head" and that perspective and thinking can be worked through, but you need to be completely honest with your therapists (who I think you seem to like okay if I am not mistaken).

I do hope you will be able to work through your anger and fears and move forward from here rather than continuing to rehash what happened a year ago.

Disappointing that you got that response from your therapist really. I think unless you were in imminent danger, they can't intervene, and it doesn't sound to me that you were in that kind of situation here?

1914Sierra, yes, yes, yes, you nailed it. Me in a nutshell, hyper focused on what could have happened, what am still afraid could happen. So, I don't actually take time to live. It's pathetic, really, outwardly I look really together, physically, mentally, people who see me now versus a year plus ago are like, hey, you look great. My life on paper looks terrific. And I hate myself more each day, I think, and no one and nothing seems to be able to get through to me.

The kid said something to me this morning, along the lines of it's a new day, you re alive, you're breathing, you have the whole world, you can make it whatever you want. So, I just kind of smiled/smirked it off, what was I supposed to say to this 25 year old kid, one of the few people IRL who know almost the entire thing, including the morning on the pier/dock? He is going miles out of his way to do everything he can for me, physically, mentally, this is his first "real" job out of college as a professional trainer, and he says that, how would it be if I told him what I really thought, which is I'm sorry I'm not dead?

Sometimes people DO have different perspectives. Is there any general agreement about how we can best get along in those circumstances? How about BOTH perspectives are "right".

I'm glad I was perceiving what you have been saying okay.

So, the next question is how can you find a way to change your perspective about your experience and about yourself where you are now so that you can move forward?

Can you accept that having had some emotional/mental difficulties is not the end of your world? that you are really not a different person today that you were when you were hospitalized? that other people still see you as you have always been, not as the broken person you are afraid you've become or afraid they see you as?

As truly ill as I have been at times over my life, particularly in the last 8 years, I am still the same person. No one has condemned me for my struggles. I am still respected and my family still loves me. If I were to keep beating myself up over my own misperception of myself as fatally flawed or "crazy" (which I don't see myself as at all), if I was to spend myself hyperfocused on the dreaded "what must people think of me", if I was to spend my life bitter that my therapist and my pdoc asked me to hospitalize myself (not imprison myself; I was ill, not a prisoner) for my own health and safety, I would be miserable and stressed out and unable to move on. How can you stop doing that TO YOURSELF so you can accept yourself as you are and move forward with life?

That is the million dollar question. I can't seem to stop myself. I always got the message from my father that I was completely worthless. This was confirmation of that fact in my eyes. I just have no clue how to accept and move on.

Are you possibly still hanging onto and even reenacting your father's abuse on yourself? Do you really want to treat yourself like your father treated you? You are not a child anymore; you have the adult power and choice to treat yourself with dignity. It is a choice. Make it. You can make the choice to respect yourself and your worth rather than choosing to emotionally abuse yourself.

Edited to add: I am NOT saying making that choice or changing your thinking is easy. It isn't, but that doesn't make it any less a choice.